Staff Member

We have approved the acquisition... because upon careful examination, this transaction does not itself raise competition issues.

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The European Union gave Google it's blessing's on the the acquisition of Motorola today. The deal is expected to gain approval from the US Justice Department later this week. Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola is driven by the device maker's portfolio of 17,000 patents, which Google hopes to use to protect Android from patent lawsuits. We wouldn't be surprised to see Google use this to leverage a few of their own lawsuits. The concern that Google will abuse the patent portfolio is a concern, but was not enough to kill the deal. Google will still be monitored by the EU, and they haver made it known that "this merger decision should not and will not mean that we are not concerned by the possibility that, once Google is the owner of this portfolio, Google can abuse these patents, linking some patents with its Android devices. This is our worry." So, this is not an open and shut case.

if US approval comes this week as expected, then Google's prediction of an early 2012 closing was spot on. It's almost there folks.